The international conservation group Oceana has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a decision by federal fisheries regulators to pull proposed protections for whales, sea turtles and dolphins at risk of dying in swordfishing nets off California.
Oceana’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles last week, alleges that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to follow correct procedures for rejecting the protections. It asks the court to reinstate the tentative rules, which set caps on the number of marine mammals and turtles that fishermen can catch, and shut down gill net fisheries for two years if they exceeded that.
“If we want to keep a sustainable domestic swordfishery and grow it, but it’s not acceptable to harm marine mammals and turtles, we need to crack down on the gill net fishery and authorize a clean alternative,” said Geoff Shester, California Program Director for Oceana.
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